Abstract

Traditional leaders are often given sub-national territorial authority in developing democracies. Though ubiquitous, the political consequences of their power has received little rigorous attention. We argue that such traditional leaders, whose power depends on the state, may be incentivized to strategically support political parties who can guarantee their survival and provide them with rents. We study this quid pro quo in the Apartheid-era Bantustans of South Africa. We show that an alignment between the state party and the chiefs maps to increased political support for the party. Further, we provide quantitative evidence consistent with chiefs acting as clientelistic brokers. Our results suggest that chiefs boost African National Congress (ANC) vote-share by 8.2 percentage points in the Bantustans. This translates into roughly 4.5% of the ANC's total vote-share, and a distortion in the national vote of 2.5 percentage points. This distortion is pivotal in determining whether the ANC is able to alter South Africa's constitution.

African Law eJournal

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This Journal is curated by:

Penelope Andrews at University of Cape Town (UCT) - Faculty of Law, Olufunmilayo Arewa at University of California, Irvine School of Law, James Thuo Gathii at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, Jonathan Klaaren at University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Makau W. Mutua at SUNY Buffalo Law School, Brian Ray at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland State University